Mentheae is the largest tribe of plants in the family Lamiaceae. It includes herbs such as sage, mint, bee balm and thyme.

"P. atriplicifolia" has been the subject of subsequent studies seeking to clarify the relationships within Mentheae. Further research combined palynological analysis of pollen grains with "rbcL" sequencing to provide additional support for the relationship between "Perovskia" and "Salvia" clade I. It also distinguished between "P. atriplicifolia" and "P. abrotanoides", while confirming their close relationship. A subsequent multigene study (four cpDNA markers and two nrDNA markers) redrew parts of the Mentheae cladogram, making "Rosmarinus" a sister group to "Perovskia".

Clinopodium is a genus of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae. It is in the tribe Mentheae of the subfamily Nepetoideae, but little else can be said with certainty about its phylogenetic position.

"Monarda" is in the tribe Mentheae of the subfamily Nepetoideae in the mint family. Molecular phylogenetic studies of this tribe have been poorly sampled, and relationships within it remain unclear. The genera "Blephilia" and "Pycnanthemum" are close relatives of "Monarda", but they might not be the closest. "Monarda" is divided into two distinct subgenera, "Monarda" and "Cheilyctis". These are easily distinguished by several characters.

Salvia is the largest genus of plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae, with nearly 1000 species of shrubs, herbaceous perennials, and annuals. Within the Lamiaceae, "Salvia" is part of the tribe Mentheae within the subfamily Nepetoideae. It is one of several genera commonly referred to as sage.

Cedronella is a genus of flowering plants in the Mentheae tribe of family Lamiaceae, comprising a single species, Cedronella canariensis, native to the Canary Islands, the Azores, and Madeira. It is also naturalized in various places (South Africa, St. Helena, New Zealand, California). Common names include Canary Islands-balm, Canary balm, and Balm-of-Gilead.

"Mentha" is a member of the tribe Mentheae in the subfamily Nepetoideae. The tribe contains about 65 genera, and relationships within it remain obscure. Authors have disagreed on the circumscription of "Mentha". Some authors have excluded "M. cervina" from the genus. "M. cunninghamii" has also been excluded by some authors, even in some recent treatments of the genus. In 2004, a molecular phylogenetic study indicated both of these species should be included in "Mentha".

Within the family Lamiaceae, the large genus "Salvia" had long been believed monophyletic, based on the structure of its stamina. Several smaller genera, including "Dorystaechas", "Perovskia", and "Meriandra" were also included in tribe Mentheae, but were thought more distantly related. In 2004, a molecular phylogenetics study based on two cpDNA genes ("rbcL" and "trnL-F") demonstrated that "Salvia" is not monophyletic, but comprises three identifiable clades. Clade I is more closely related to "Perovskia" than to other members of "Salvia".

All of the species in this genus are native to North America. Most are very strongly scented and pungent, and are used in cooking and in making herbal tea. Indeed, like the true mints ("Mentha") they belong to the tribe Mentheae of subfamily Nepetoideae. However, while the mountain-mints are a highly advanced genus most probably closest to the bee balms ("Monarda"), which are also endemic to North America, the true mints are part of a more basal and largely European radiation of this tribe.

"Agastache" is Greek for "many spikes". The genus was established in 1762 by Jan Frederik Gronovius in the second edition of his controversial "Flora Virginica", based on the specimens and notes of John Clayton. It is a member of subfamily Nepetoideae, which contains a large proportion of the world's aromatic culinary herbs. Within its subfamily, it belongs to the mint tribe (Mentheae), and therein to the catmint subtribe (Nepetinae). The Nepetinae are robustly supported by cladistic analyses of morphological and DNA sequence data, and were recognized in the mid-late 19th century already.

The classification of "Salvia" has long been based on the genus' unusual pollination and stamen structure, which was presumed to have evolved only once. More recently, a study using DNA sequencing of "Salvia" species has shown that different versions of this lever mechanism have evolved at least three different times within "Salvia". This clearly makes the genus non-monophyletic, which means that members of the genus have evolved from different ancestors, rather than sharing one common ancestor. The DNA analysis has shown that the genus may consist of as many as three different clades, or branches. The study concluded that "Salvia" is not a natural genus—some of its branches have a closer relationship to other genera in the tribe Mentheae than to other "Salvia" species.

Walker and Sytsma (2007) also addressed the question of whether "Salvia" is truly polyphyletic or just paraphyletic within the tribe Mentheae. To make "Salvia" monophyletic would require the inclusion of 13 species from "Rosmarinus", "Perovskia", "Dorystaechas", "Meriandra", and "Zhumeria" genera. The information attained by Walker and Sytsma (2007) supporting the three independent origins of the staminal lever indicate that "Salvia" is not the case where 13 species (currently not members of the genus) are actually members of "Salvia" but underwent character reversals—in other words, "Salvia" is paraphyletic as previously circumscribed [12]. In 2017 Drew et al. recircumscribed "Salvia", proposing that the five small embedded genera ("Dorystaechas, Meriandra, Perovskia, Rosmarinus, and Zhumeria") be subsumed into a broadly defined "Salvia". This approach would require only 15 name changes whereas maintaining the five small genera and renaming various "Salvia" taxa would require over 700 name changes[13].

The defining characteristic of the genus "Salvia" is the unusual pollination mechanism. It is central to any investigation into the systematics, species radiation, or pollination biology of "Salvia". It consists of two stamens (instead of the typical four found in other members of the tribe Mentheae) and the two thecae on each stamen are separated by an elongate connective. It is the elongation of the connective that enables the formation of the lever mechanism. Sprengel (1793) was the first to illustrate and describe the nototribic (dorsal) pollination mechanism in Salvia. When a pollinator probes a male stage flower for nectar, (pushing the posterior anther theca) the lever causes the stamens to move and the pollen to be deposited on the pollinator. When the pollinator withdraws from the flower, the lever returns the stamens to their original position. In older, female stage flowers, the stigma is bent down in a general location that corresponds to where the pollen was deposited on the pollinator's body. The lever of most "Salvia" species is not specialized for a single pollinator, but is generic and selected to be easily released by many bird and bee pollinators of varying shapes and sizes. The lever arm can be specialized to be different lengths so that the pollen is deposited on different parts of the pollinator’s body. For example, if a bee went to one flower and pollen was deposited on the far back of her body, but then it flew to another flower where the stigma was more forward (anterior), pollination could not take place. This can result in reproductive isolation from the parental population and new speciation can occur. It is believed that the lever mechanism is a key factor in the speciation, adaptive radiation, and diversity of this large genus.